“Let nopony claim that Lord Blueblood IV is some common...meater!” Bluebood growled, as best he was able, though the cloth held to his muzzle to keep the blood dripping from one nostril from staining his inherited Haygyptian cotton sheets.
“Nopony claims such, milord,” Butler, head butler to the Blueblood family and long suffering nursemaid to the lord of said family intoned, “least they out themselves a flapdoodle or worse yet.”
“I was not prepared, Butler. A fair round of hooficuffs with a Lady is unprecedented! It’s...uncouth...is what it is!” Blueblood thrashed weakly in his bed. His opulent bedchambers turned recovery ward echoed with his shout in the warm glow of the gas lights. “It was unfair, what’s more. Lady Luna is an alicorn, blessed with powers beyond even a noble of my standing.”
“Of course, sire.” Butler stood at faithful attention besides his lordship’s bed, a fresh change of linens in his hooves and a gilded pail full of the lordship’s former dinner and regurgitated nightcap. The blow inflicted upon Lord Blueblood by her Ladyship Luna Selene Artemis had upset his constitution greatly, necessitating the vessel’s—and sadly Butler’s own—presence.
“Perhaps, sire, if I may suggest to you a course of action, you might wish to request a rematch? With your hard won knowledge of Lady Luna’s...er, techniques...you could face her on more even grounds?”
Blueblood dabbed at his muzzle again and looked down at the spotting on the cloth. While he had received what amounted to Celestia’s own uppercut to the sternum, the source of his nose bleed was his own subsequent crumple to the cobblestones behind the Ailing Alicorn. Regardless, no pony, not even one as close to the throne as Lady Luna made a stallion like he bleed his own blood. He turned a blurry gaze at Butler and nodded. “Yes...that will be just what I shall do. Afterwards, I shall regale the courts with the truth of those rumors about a certain wagtail by name of Lady Sparkle II!”
“You dare? AGAIN?!” Luna snorted, eyes wide as she stared at the wastrel, Blueblood. “You, sir, are no noble pony. Thou errant ill-bred whey-face!”
Gasps rose around them, the court of Canterlot’s nobility rocking with the shock of Lady Luna’s accusations. Many of them, near constant patrons of the Ailing Alicorn, were witness to the honor-bound bout of hooficuffs between Luna and the singular Lord Blueblood just the previous afternoon. For the lout to return and again anger the Lady was the purest form of stupidity. That did not stop them from quickly launching into a raucous debate over the odds of the betting pool.
“I do.” Blueblood, in his defense, stood firmly in full face of the dark alicorn’s anger. Behind Luna, the target of his comments, Lady Twilight Sparkle II, reclined in her layered skirts and petticoats, a look of only mild interest on her face. He looked past Luna, into Lady Twilight’s eyes and moved his own slightly in a silent plea to aid him, despite his multiple besmirchments.
In return, Lady Twilight’s gaze said he was on his own.
Blueblood puffed out his chest in a show of masculinity and chose to take the high road of civility. “Let us not quarrel again, Lady Luna, it is not something suited to for a lady to engage in. It is indelicate.”
“Tis true that delicacy is the domain of a lady, but I, sir, am no lady!” Luna reared up and slipped off her hooflinks. “I shall not standby and let you spread falsehoods about the fair Lady Sparkle. None shall damage her good name whilst I draw breath!”
Blueblood swallowed roughly, his well bruised stomach turning when Luna unbuttoned the three clasps holding on her waistcoat and once again revealed a body forged more from iron than flesh. “I...er...am far more ready for you this time.”
Luna approached Blueblood like a lioness approaches a cornered rabbit and spit on the floor at his hooves. “Then have at you, scoundrel.”
A soft voice rang out in the sudden quiet of the Parliamentary building, halting the rise of Luna’s hoof. “Luna, a moment please.”
Luna turned, keeping one eye on Blueblood while she looked back at her paramour. “Yes, my Lady?”
“Please refrain from getting too much blood on the floors. You know your sister, Her Grace, disapproves.” Twilight smiled gently, shifting on her chaise lounge so that an inch more of her stocking covered ankles played peek-a-boo at the hem of her long ruffled skirts. “However, if Lord Blueblood thinks me such a hedge-creeper, then perhaps I shall indulge the winner of this contest with a better view, if he or she so desires?”
Luna grinned, slipping fully out of her waistcoat and folding it before placing it on her vacated seat. “As you say, my Lady!”
To say the fight was one for the history books would be giving Lord Blueblood IV of Canterlot too much credit. He did, as the records show, manage to take twice the beating as he did the first time. Once more to his poorly conditioned gut and then again to his jewels before crumpling to the ground. If anything was to be recorded of this fight, it might be that there was not ever a Lord Blueblood V to fill the IV’s seat among the nobility afterwards.